


little rebel spies

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kissing, M/M, Mission Fic, Pre-Rogue One, Scoundrels, Spying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Lando tipped his head in acknowledgment, a score in Cassian’s favor for a game neither were keeping much track of. At least, Cassian wasn’t. And Lando was too laid-back—even his arm draped itself across the back of the booth to project a languid fluidity that Cassian couldn’t quite bring himself to dismiss entirely—to appear as though he tracked the numbers. Likely, he did. Most smugglers worth a damn calculated the odds with the best of them, but the way Lando managed to make himself seem the opposite… it was kind of impressive.Cassian sniffed. He hadn’t come out here tonight to be impressed.





	little rebel spies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



The bar stank of cigarra smoke, spilled whiskey, and sweat, not so different from every other shit bar in the galaxy that Cassian had been to in his life. But somehow this one managed to be more than the sum of its parts, so awful a dump that even he, who’d spent more than his fair share of time in terrible places, wrinkled his nose and judged it to be in poor taste. As he pulled at his jacket, it took every ounce of self-discipline in him to not lift the corner of it to cover his nose. He barely kept his gorge down and even that much control was a battle hard won.

“Blast this kriffing—” He stamped his feet to loosen the dirt he threatened to track into the place if he didn’t. It was only afterward that he realized he couldn’t actually make this place any worse with his actions and felt foolish for having tried. A handful of Gand, their insectoid faces swollen and bumpy around respirators held firmly in place by prayers as far as Cassian could tell, stared at him: again, only as far as Cassian could tell since their eyes registered no discernible recognition that he saw. Drinks sat before them undrunk. Whether they were for the Gand or for any business partners who showed up, Cassian didn’t feel willing to wager, but he was curious all the same. Did Gand even drink anything?

He didn’t know.

If he hadn’t become a spy, he might easily have been a journalist. Nothing interested him so much as the strange foibles of other people. It was what made him a good spy. The fact that he put all that intrigue aside and got on with his job instead of living a dream, _that_ was what made him a great spy.

Along with the fact that he willingly subjected himself to places like this. Why in all the worlds of this galaxy, his contact had chosen here, he didn’t know, but he was determined to find out. The man owed him that much.

Unhappy, he pushed his way through the crowded venue and refused to ask himself why this place was so popular when it was clearly so terrible. More than a few people of various species glared at him for his abruptness, but only one grabbed hold of his arm and dragged him toward a booth in the back. “Quiet,” the man said, his lips brushing against the shell of Cassian’s ear while Cassian froze and considered his options. His thoughts whirled first to stabbing the guy, then to breaking his hand, and finally to spitting in his face. “Don’t act like a kidnap victim here, okay?”

Cassian struggled half-heartedly, but that whole ‘great spy’ thing had a few additional perks, like a better intuition than most. “Then don’t treat me like a kidnap victim,” he answered. If he were a Squamatan, those words might have been spit out along with some venom, but since he was only human, the venom remained in the realm of the metaphorical only. “Are you my—”

“Ssh,” the man replied. “Are you touched in the head? March.” He adjusted Cassian’s trajectory with a light kick to his heels. “And not toward certain doom.”

Oh, great. Not only was he being kidnapped, but he was being kidnapped by a man with a flair for the theatrical. Cassian tried to twist and get a good look at him, but the man shoved him forward. “Nuh uh,” he answered. “Not quite yet. Just keep acting natural and I’ll explain everything.” Still at Cassian’s back, the man leaned even more into him. It didn’t seem that he held a weapon and he certainly hadn’t stopped to liberate the many forms of death Cassian carried with him. Either he was an incompetent or there was something else going on here.

Cassian was willing to bet on something else. If not, he might very well find himself dead, but he didn’t think so. His instincts were often the only thing he had and they hadn’t led him too far astray yet. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he replied, going for pleasant and failing spectacularly at it. His words always came out sounding like a threat, most especially when he was reaching for friendly. K-2 always said he should really work on that. He’d seen no reason to do so before. Maybe this would change his mind.

Or maybe it would just make him more stubborn. The odds there were even at best, if not weighted in the direction of his own stubbornness.

“I always know what I’m doing,” the man said. “Take a seat in that booth over there, the side facing the ‘freshers, not the other way.”

“Tell me, are you always this demanding?”

The man laughed. It was a good laugh, a fact that Cassian hated admitting and wouldn’t have to anyone, not even under torture. “Sometimes I’m worse.”

Cassian snorted and shook his bangs out of his eyes. They’d already grown a little lank with the humidity of the place. Yet another reason why this place was its own exquisite hell. He did what his captor asked of him, making a grand display of it, raising his hands and everything. “I hope you realize I don’t do this for just everyone, you know.”

“As long as you do it for me,” the man said, agreeable. He slid into the seat across from Cassian. Whatever Cassian had expected, though, he got the opposite. Though the man was garbed in a bog-standard smuggler’s outfit—leather vest, white shirt, with a prominent display of the blaster he carried at his side—he managed to pique Cassian’s interest all the more. The leather shone. The shirt was crisp. His blaster had none of the known signs for frequent or even infrequent use: the barrel was too clean, its surface too unmarked. Still, he seemed comfortable enough with it strapped to him to give Cassian the impression that even if he preferred not to use it, he could.

He stretched toward the center of the pocked metal table between them. Dented by years of rowdy patrons, it was well passed the time to be replaced. When Cassian didn’t speak, he did. “Little Rebel spies are worth a lot in this arm of the galaxy.” Though his words were provocative, he spoke them quietly enough that Cassian couldn’t quite accuse him of lacking discretion. At least in this one way. “And your contact’s been flipped.”

Cassian crossed his arms and smirked, shrugging for extra effect. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just trying to get a drink in this fine establishment.” He eyed the man up and down, sized him up. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, he was far from the worst-looking man he’d seen, especially in this sort of place. If it came down to it, Cassian could probably distract this guy with a drink and a few hours of whichever of his old covers he decided to pull up from the recesses of his memory. Certainly, the one he’d lined up wouldn’t work. That one had been meant for his contact. “At least until you came along and made things interesting.”

It was safe to say that flirting did not come naturally to Cassian. Safe if only because K-2, who didn’t know a damned thing about flirting either, always told him so. But he was willing to try if it could gain him _something_ from what was looking to be, at best, a wasted night. At worst, it would become acutely dangerous.

The man grinned and Cassian hated it for the way it made his stomach flip with interest. This wasn’t the time nor the place. “Interesting is good,” he agreed. Holding his hand out, he offered it for a shake. “Lando Calrissian, purveyor of the galaxy’s finest—”

Cassian did not take his hand. “Save it for someone who doesn’t know you’re a smuggler.”

“That’s quite a loaded term, friend, and wholly inaccurate.” His smile hardly dimmed despite Cassian’s brusque manner. Cassian liked that about him. In fact, Cassian liked a lot about him, not least of all his audacity. It was a trait Cassian couldn’t allow himself to have. Or rather, couldn’t allow himself to bluster about advertising the fact. Cassian _had_ done some audacious things in his life. This Lando Calrissian, if that was even his real name, he’d done things and he didn’t mind people knowing about them. Cassian, on the other hand, couldn’t let anyone know what he’d done at all.

It would get him killed.

Then again, it wasn’t like the Empire looked so kindly on smugglers. At least not on ones who didn’t work for them. And if Lando here really was trying to save a ‘little Rebel spy’ from walking into a trap, then it seemed safe to assume Lando was no friend of the Empire.

Of course, since Cassian had never heard of him, it was entirely likely he was no friend of the Rebellion’s either.

The way Cassian’s luck worked, it wouldn’t have surprised him if both possibilities were true at the same time.

“If you’re not a smuggler, then what are you?”

Lando’s eyes flashed, a little dangerous, a little intrigued, and a whole lot more curious about Cassian than Cassian wanted him to be. “What I am is an observant man who almost watched a Rebel walk into a trap.” His attention drifted past their table. His head jerked slightly. “Don’t look now, but there are your contacts right over there. You’ll see ‘em in a minute. They’re heading for the door. I hope they don’t know what you’re supposed to look like. Luckily, I don’t think they’re quite as smart as I am given how loudly they’d been discussing their plans to screw over the Rebellion. Just to be safe, you should—”

Just to be safe, what Cassian did was reach across the table and grab Lando by the shirt, pulling him forward into a kiss. It served dual purposes, shutting Lando up and, so long as he twisted their bodies the right way—not so easy with about half a meter of unyielding metal between them—stopping Cassian from showing his face just in case those goons did recognize him. He could see now what Lando was talking about. Though there was quite a bit of distance between this table and the exit, Cassian saw the belligerence that rolled off them. They wanted someone dead. And Cassian noticed enough clues to indicate that they _were_ his contacts. Likely, the one they wanted dead was him.

Possibly, Cassian owed Lando a debt, but for the moment, his thoughts skittered back from surveilling to the feel of Lando’s mouth against his. It was softer than he expected, his mustache an interesting counterpoint as it brushed against the stubble Cassian could never quite bother himself to get rid of. He couldn’t help but smell the cologne Lando wore, redolent of the scent of some planet’s interpretation of woods, green and a bit of some local spice. The man might’ve been a smuggler. In fact, Cassian was sure of it even if Lando wanted to argue the semantics. But he wasn’t _just_ a smuggler.

Just the same as how Cassian wasn’t just a spy.

Releasing Lando, who gracefully resumed his seat, his hand pressing against his stomach briefly, Cassian huffed in dark amusement. He’d never thought to do that before. And now that he had, sheer, hot embarrassment burned through his veins. That was foolish and unnecessary and it had, by all accounts, worked. His supposed contacts were gone; they hadn’t even looked this way.

The kiss might have been overkill, but Cassian’s experiences often ended in overkill. That comforted him little. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m… sorry about that.”

Lando’s smile—why was he always smiling?—took on a sympathetic bent. “Hazards of the job?”

Cassian’s arms crossed. “It’s not like the holos if that’s what you mean.”

“How unfortunate.”

If Lando was always smiling, then Cassian was his opposite and his frown grew more disapproving by the moment. He wasn’t used to these—these kinds of interactions with people. Hells, his lips still tingled with the brief contact they’d shared. Anticipation thrummed inside of him, discharging itself across the surface of his skin while the rest of him remembered that it had no where to go. What was he going to do? Spend the night with this man? No. That was far too dangerous. Even what little they’d shared was too dangerous.

He couldn’t have just anybody know his face and his job. At least he hadn’t asked for a name yet. That, he wouldn’t have gotten, not his real name anyway. Few enough people knew that and all of them were safely back on the Rebel base, where they could be questioned if necessary, watched if not to ensure loyalty—that was too much like Imperial tactics to pass anyone’s lips—then to ensure everyone was happy and healthy and had no reason to be disaffected. A precaution Cassian felt was probably necessary even if he didn’t understand it himself. He was never happy and he had no thought of turning over to the other side.

“How much cleaner it is,” Cassian retorted. Romantic entanglements, sexual entanglements, even familial and friendly entanglements were all so much usable baggage. The enemy could abuse those webs, find a weakness and exploit it, turn those people against you. They were, at best, liabilities.

“Lonelier.”

“Safer.”

“Boring.”

And though Cassian wanted to be annoyed, he couldn’t bring himself to be. Lando wasn’t really trying to argue with him, not so far as Cassian could tell. This was just his way of making conversation. If that conversation was cordially recalcitrant, pushed simply for the joy of pushing it, Cassian didn’t have to allow himself to fall into the trap. “I’ve known a lot of boring people,” Cassian said, neutral. “They tend to live longer lives.”

Lando tipped his head in acknowledgment, a score in Cassian’s favor for a game neither were keeping much track of. At least, Cassian wasn’t. And Lando was too laid-back—even his arm draped itself across the back of the booth to project a languid fluidity that Cassian couldn’t quite bring himself to dismiss entirely—to appear as though he tracked the numbers. Likely, he did. Most smugglers worth a damn calculated the odds with the best of them, but the way Lando managed to make himself seem the opposite… it was kind of impressive.

Cassian sniffed. He hadn’t come out here tonight to be impressed.

“I can drink to that,” Lando said, agreeable even though dubiousness shone in his eyes. Not so strong as disbelief, it still suggested that he thought Cassian was full of shit. “If you’d be willing to accompany me at it.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Cassian sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t come out here chat with a stranger.”

“Sure you did.” Lando’s voice took on a friendly, cajoling quality. “Just not the one you thought you’d be chatting with.”

“The one I was supposed to be chatting with had been primed to give me important intel regarding…” Cassian waved his hand in the air. “…classified information, in any case. That isn’t quite the same thing.”

Lando’s hands splayed across the table, his fingertips paling under the pressure he exerted on them. “You’re so sure of that?”

Cassian cocked his head. As much as he wanted to call bantha shit on Lando in return, he got the feeling in that direction lay a trap. Instead of falling for it, he remained silently skeptical, peering at Lando with curious, unimpressed eyes. It was his standard fare for anyone who came to him with information, not least of all because it tripped so many people up.

Lando, as Cassian expected, didn’t so much as flinch. “Drinks are on you if I’m wrong, how about that?”

Cassian continued merely to stare.

“Drinks and another kiss,” Lando continued, as though that would make a difference, “that you leave here happier than you would’ve if they’d had a chance to say their piece.”

Unable to help it, Cassian felt his lip twitch. It was all Lando needed to crow triumphantly, reaching across the table to punch Cassian in the shoulder. Then, sliding out of the booth, he sauntered toward the bar, an intriguing cant to his stride that was far-too appealing from the direction in which Cassian saw it.

The bastard, he guessed, was doing it on purpose.

Later, when he proved Cassian wrong, drinks, kisses, and something else exchanged, Cassian found he couldn’t be too angry about that fact.


End file.
